San Antonio's cultural experience museum..
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Growing Up in the Big Bend "Nana's Father Is Chasing Pancho Villa, but Thelma's Father Knows Where He Is." Thelma, would you like to maybe start off and tell us about where you were born and when, and tell us a few facts about your early days? I was born on my grandparents' farm near Floresville, Texas-I guess that's commonly called the Brush Country, at least Dobie calls it the Brush Country-February 6, 1905. My parents lived on a ranch in the Big Bend. Of course, that was so far from doctors and facilities that my mother went to her mother's to have her baby, which is Thelma Fletcher, Thelma Rawls Fletcher. I've been Fletcher so long that I'd almost forgotten my maiden name, but not quite. I grew up on a ranch until I was a teenager. I grew up on a ranch in the Big Bend. My father and uncle were ranchers, and, of course, there all ranches are big. They are not counted by acres, but they're counted by sections. It took sometimes three sections to keep the brood mares away from the others, from the stallions. People used to laughingly say it takes a section to feed a calf because it is so mountainous, but it is absolutely glorious land, glorious. My recollections there are all happy ones. I am probably free of a lot of feelings that a lot of other people might have from childhood because I had such freedom of thinking and action in a very wild part of Texas and [was] totally uninhibited. Could you ride a horse before you could walk? Oh, yes, I could ride a horse before I could walk. I learned to speak Spanish, and really my Spanish was much better than my English when I went to school. At the age of nine, I went to boarding school in San Antonio at Incarnate Word. This was customary for most ranchers' daughters to be sent off to school. Some of my favorite friends were Mexican girls from Monterrey and Mexico City, because I had much more rapport with them than I did with the English-speaking girls. But it was a marvelous cross-cut of not only our-really our North American continent-because there were also girls from the Indian Territory in Oklahoma that came with all of their gorgeous squaw costumes and beads. But of course they were not allowed to wear them. They had to keep them-they did keep them in the trunks-and this was one of the great treats that we had. A bunch of us would slip off to the trunk room, and this one particular girl would show us her gorgeous Indian costumes, which were really not costumes to her; they were her clothes. My roommate at Incarnate Word was a very colorful person. She was Nana Tompkins, and her father was Colonel Tompkins, who was head of the-what[ever] cavalry is stationed at Fort Bliss. He and Pershing were chasing Pancho Villa . Well, my father and uncle knew Pancho Villa. You hired the Mexicans that came across the river. There were no other people to hire. They were always coming across, and you didn't know who they were. They were not without personality. It isn't that the names were all Gonzales, you know, the same names. They never knew whether they were hiring Pancho Villa's men or not. And he made raids in that part of the country that were very, very serious. He would come with his men-I'm talking about Pancho Villa-and he would come with his men and take the remuda , which were the trained horses of the ranchers. Then [the ranchers would] form a posse, and they would trail them. [Pancho Villa's men] would leave their old nags, and then they'd be trailed to the river. And, of course, there the trail was lost or else that was the dividing line. You couldn't go any farther. Now, the remuda , which is the horses that have been trained, they're part of the herd. [ Remuda ] is a Spanish word. These are the horses that are broken and trained to cut out cattle for the roundups. They are the most prized possessions of any rancher because he is afoot and lost without his remuda . The remuda was always kept in what we called a trap, which was about a half a section of land. Then they were rounded up every morning and brought in, and each rider would pick the horse he was going to ride that day. And they kind of kept them rotated so that they would stay trained because some of them were roping horses, some of them were cutting horses, and they were each trained in a different activity for a roundup or for just riding on the ranch. You know, like mending fences or seeing about the windmills. Did they have to go to San Antonio to buy these horses or were they.? Oh, no, no. These horses, a lot of them, were raised in that part of the country. They went to other places. There were a lot of them. They raised a lot of horses out there, and a lot of them were shipped to San Antonio or down to the southern part of Texas where farming was the mode of making a living. They needed horses to cultivate, or mules. But the mules and the horses were shipped yearly as were the cattle. The cattle did not usually come to South Texas, but the horses and the mules did. Was this around 1916 that your father knew Pancho Villa? Oh, yes, it was around 1916, 1917. And Colonel Tompkins's daughter, Nana, was my roommate at school. One time my father came down-he came to San Antonio to see me-and, of course, he had to use a taxi because in those days they traveled by train; then, when they got where they were going, they used taxis. And he said, well, he couldn't stay very late. Pancho had a brother that was very well liked on both sides of the river. [Pancho] had said [through] his brother he had heard that my father, Fletcher Rawls (they called him Fletcher Rawlie and later they called him Jeff because [those] were his initials, J.F.Rawls, John Fletcher Rawls), that he was going to San Antonio. [Pancho] wanted to send some money to his wife, who was in hiding out near one of the missions. And, of course, [my father] didn't like Pancho Villa any better than anybody at all, but, in those days, if you were to be a courier, you just did what you had to do. So, he told me he couldn't stay very late because he wasn't about to go out in a taxi to this mission. He said, "You know how it is out there." It was one that had not had much restoration. I don't remember which one it was at that point. So, of course, I told this--I wasn't supposed to, I'm sure-but I told it, so the girls had a good laugh. And it was quite a saying around school, "Well, here Nana's father is chasing Pancho Villa, but Thelma's father knows where he is." This was quite a joke around school. How old were you then? Well, let's see, I don't know how old I was then. I was about ten or eleven, right in there. And then, of course, the posses were formed by the ranchers. You know, they were all good friends of the people, but [the ranchers] never knew who they were hiring. And up until not too many years ago, they still paid in pesos. So, it was really almost like part of Mexico, and yet not. So, I guess we had the best of both worlds, probably didn't know it. Well, the ranchers knew it, but the children, you know, all we knew [was that] it was just gorgeous. Before you went to Incarnate Word, did you have a little schoolhouse on the ranch? Well, it was required that the ranchers educate not only their own children, but they had to also educate the children of the Mexicans that worked for them, or anybody else. But usually the cowboys were not married, because, when they got married, they'd buy a little squat of their own, and then they would all participate in the roundups and help each other. But your regular workmen were the border Mexicans, and they depended on us for a livelihood. And, of course, you had some that were not very good, but you sure had a lot of very good people, too. What was it you asked me, Jane? I keep wandering. Oh, about the school. Oh, the school. Well, every rancher had to provide facilities for school, so usually what they did was to set aside a room, and then the other ranchers' children would come and then a teacher, usually some young cute girl from the university, just out of college. You mean, like the University of Texas at Austin? Yes, Austin, or from San Marcos, which was then called a normal school [early colleges that trained teachers]. They would come out, but about as long as they could stay and take it was about three months. That's about it. So we all went to school for three months at a time. I was too young, but my cousins rode horseback to where they had to go to school-fifteen miles every day, one way. I was put in school younger than that. Later, the families, as they prospered, they'd buy a house in town, the nearest town being Marfa. We were seventy-five miles south of Marfa. Well, how did you get to school? You said your cousins rode a horse, so how did you go? Well, I usually.they either had the school at our ranch, or if it was at some other ranch, well, I would have to stay with the teacher. I'd have to go live with the teacher, and I'd be gone, you know, like, well, about a month at a time before I'd see my parents. This might seem strange to a lot of people, but that life was so different. The ranchers were gone a lot from home, and it was up to the women to know how to shoot and protect themselves. Because [the men would] go on the cattle drives; they'd go where they were shipping cattle or shipping horses, and there was a lot of that sort of separation. The women had to be very strong, and, really, this was, I guess, the last frontier. And then, as they prospered, they'd buy homes in Marfa, and they would live there in the winter-the families would live there in winter. The husbands and their sons-if they were grown sons out of school-they would be at the ranch, and they would go back and forth maybe a couple of times a month. And, of course, they'd be batching [living like bachelors] at the ranch. There was no bad feeling. Oh, you know [whining], "I'm separated from my family." This was a way of life. What about your mother? Did she have somebody that did the cooking at the ranch? Oh, no, no, no. She did all of her own baking and her own cooking. That type of servants were not used. They were not servants in that respect. The Mexican families had their own households. They did not come to cook. They would maybe help you iron. Maybe you'd get one to help you iron, or help you do something like that, as a helper for one certain thing, but not cooking. My mother's way of cooking was very different than the Mexican way of cooking, because they were not versatile. They only had two ingredients. You bought beans, you know, like 500 pounds a year in 100-pound sacks. Each rancher had sort of a little commissary, a room outside that he kept locked, where he kept supplies. They only marketed maybe twice a year. It was done by wagon, and you camped out going to Marfa. You camped out on your way, and, of course, I remember that as being most fun. The camping out was marvelous. Was it a whole day from the ranch? Two days from the ranch. Two days! Well, by wagon, and the roads were so bad, of course. They were the last to get automobiles out there. They didn't have automobiles until about 1916, I think. Maybe in town, but [not] out on the ranches, because those roads were only possible for wagons; not even light buggies could travel. And our house, our ranch, which was "Alamosa Secario," was also a stage stop. That was kind of exciting too, because the stages would stop on their way to Terlingua, which was then the quicksilver mines. And that was British-owned. The couple who owned them, the Normans, were from Canada. And I understand that they made all their investments back in Canadian bonds and things. But that was open for years and years. In fact, Kenneth Ragsdale has written a very fine book, well documented, on the Terlingua quicksilver. Is that where they have the chili cookoffs? Yes. And that's in Texas, not in Mexico? Yes, it's down near Fort Leaton, which is now being restored by someone in Houston, I understand. And I'm dying to go down and see the restoration, because it was just a ruin of an early fort. What about your mother and dad? Did they grow up on the ranch too? Well, no. They were both from around Pleasanton and Floresville. But they were rural people. They had lived, both of them, on farms. I think practically all of the young men from Floresville migrated out to West Texas. When my father first went to West Texas, his older brother, Tom Rawls, who later became know as Don Tomás in the Big Bend, he was the older brother, so he left home and went to work for the Spencer Cattle Company on the Pecos. So my father, who was the baby of the family, I suppose he left when he was about fifteen or sixteen, went out and went to work as a cowhand for the Spencer Cattle Company. He got to know Judge Roy Bean real well. In fact, he was probably the youngest cowboy, or one of the youngest ones, so he stayed, I think, at Roy Bean's place quite a lot; and so Roy Bean made him deputy. He was one of his deputies. I'm real sorry that I didn't get a recording of a lot of the stories that he used to tell about Roy Bean. I don't ever see those stories in books. Do you remember some of them? No, I don't remember them. I was so little when he'd tell those, and this was his early life. From there they went out and bought land, ranch land, down below Marfa. They ended up owning Tascotal Mesa and the San Jacinto Peak Ranch. I don't know how many sections were in that. At the top of San Jacinto Peak, there are three sections. That's where they kept the brood mares. It's a big country, and I think that was bought from the Reynolds Cattle Company. All of these people had-and they still are-big ranches in that part of the world, well, all over Texas. Maybe there's ten sections to a mountain, and maybe more. You might be buying just one mountain. Does your family still have some interest in that land out there? No, they've all sold. My father's been out of it for a long time. Of course, he's been gone for many years, but the Rawls's sold several years ago, and I understand then it was split up and it was sold to a syndicate. It has been sold twice, and I think the last time I heard it was over two million dollars it was sold for. When you think about it, they bought it when it was wilderness, still is. At that time, it was what, like forty cents an acre. They bought school land for forty cents an acre. What do you mean, school land? Well, you're asking me technical questions I don't know very much about, but a lot of that land was owned by the public school system of Texas. University of Texas was one of the biggest landowners. Like the Littlefield lands and like a lot of other lands [where] later they have found oil. I don't know about how that was designated to be school land. I don't know about that. I have never done any.I have never been interested, particularly, in how they got it, how it was set up. Well, it had to have been set up in the original proceedings of the state. The Permanent Fund probably comes from that. Well, it does, but how it was set up in the original conventions.... Were you an only child? No, I have a brother, who is three years younger than I, and he is a designing engineer. He is now retired, but he was with Bechtel. He lives in Houston. He lives at Valley Lodge, which is little-when I say a little spot, not that little-but they sort of have ranchettes. He just couldn't live without a horse, so he had to have a place to keep it. He had quarter horses, so he had to have a small place where he could keep his horses. He's retired now, but he still lives at Valley Lodge. And so you had him to keep you company when you were children. Oh, yes, when we were children, we, you know, played stick horses, and we built corrals out of rocks. We had very few toys. You had to use and play with what you had. And then, of course, I had dolls, and he'd get mad because he didn't want to play dolls. And then I'd get awful tired of playing stick horse and building corrals out of rocks, too. So, we'd do that a while with each other, and then we'd each go our own way and play with the things we liked. And, of course, our mother read to us a lot, and that was wonderful because there was no such thing as radio. In fact, we had a telephone, and the telephone was put in by my father. It ran from Terlingua to Marfa. I think he had two Mexicans and about three burros. The burros [were used to] go up into the mountains and get the piñones . The piñones are like big, big cedars but gorgeous. They'd cut those down, and the burros could only bring back one on each side. It was a slow process. There [was] no such thing as these automatic hammers for all the rock. They just had crowbars, and it was very painful. It went on for a long, long time. Then, if the line was washed out, well, it behooved the rancher [to] look after it and put it back in shape, put it up again. And then, of course, every rancher had his own ring. I don't remember what ours was, probably three longs and a short, that type of thing. It was the best newspaper around, I'm sure. Well, how many people would be out on that line? Well, there wouldn't be over five or six families from Terlingua to Marfa. And about how many miles is that? Well, that's more than seventy-five. I would say that's a good 100 miles of line, or maybe a little bit longer, because of the way they had to run it. So they had to put the piñones up. They were the telephone poles? They were the telephone poles. They had to do this, you know. They probably didn't get over four or five [per day]. Oh, I bet they didn't get over three poles in a day probably, with crowbars. This was contracted by a man who ran a store in Terlingua. He had a government contract for this, and then my father took it from there. The man's name was McQuirt. He was quite a well-known citizen, and he ran the store. And I guess he was there for years. So this was the kind of telephone that you had to turn the crank? Oh, yes. People think they are so charming. I think what I have is much better. And I'm not real crazy about all the kerosene lamp things either. I had to clean the chimneys; I don't think they're so hot. I don't think they're so charming. I was going to ask you what your chores were. Did your mother have you do certain things each day? Oh, well, one of my chores when I got older-I remember not having to do very much-but one of my chores was to clean the lampshades, and that was awful. I just hated it. All that soot, you know, where they'd turn the wick up too much. That was kind of a messy chore. Nobody liked to do that. Did you use the piñones for your wood? I imagine you had a wood stove. Oh, you had to have wood stoves, yes. Wood or any kind of scraps of trees that had rotted or been blown over were at a premium. Wood was at a premium, so they were always looking for, as we used to call it in the Big Bend, leña . And that's why you still see in Mexico (all over Mexico, but particularly in the northern part where there is not much vegetation), these burros [carrying what] looks like trimmed-off limbs. Any kind of a branch was saved. Of course, there was lots of greasewood out there, but you didn't burn greasewood. Refrigeration? Well, the refrigeration was, let me see, it was usually three-tiered, metal frame, and it had a trough around it. Then the cloths were wet in water and put around every day. They had to be fresh, every day. That kept your milk cool. They usually had a building aside where no one went in. It was all adobe. Everything was adobe out there. Where the milk cooler was, that's where they kept anything fresh that they needed to. And, of course, meat couldn't be kept very long. It had to be pickled or made into jerky. I just loved jerky, still do. Did you grow anything? Well, every, every, every rancher had a garden, and if they didn't have a garden, they were just considered poor white trash. You know, they were just too lazy. They didn't have fresh vegetables if they didn't have a garden because you didn't have neighbors. Your neighbor was usually fifteen or twenty miles away. And, so, every rancher had a garden and an orchard, and that was irrigated. That was one of the chores-not chores-it was considered fun to go down and watch your father irrigate the garden because it was a pretty big plot. And then the women-not only my mother but all mothers-did the canning and dried the fruit. Oh, so you had fruit trees, then? Oh, yes. The fruit trees were marvelous. Not in our section of the Big Bend, but up in the Fort Davis Mountains, they had nice apple orchards. But down where we lived, we had apricots, lots of apricots, and peaches and plums and anything that could be irrigated because the soil is very rich in minerals, and if it has a little water, it'll just burst into bloom. Was the water from the river or did you have wells? No, there were no rivers except the Rio Grande, and most of the time you could walk across it at that point. They had to drill as deep for water wells in that section of the country as they do for oil wells in most places. And, of course, they always used to joke and say if they brought in any oil, this would be very disgusting because what they needed most was water. I know it's used as a slang expression, but it's also very true. Oh, I want to tell you more about Pancho Villa. I was a little girl, and I was still at home. I had not gone off to school. We would stand behind the house. We were about fifteen miles as the crow flies to Presidio. Ojinaga [Mexico] was being bombarded by Pancho Villa, and we could hear the bombs; we could hear the shells from the back of our house. Were you frightened? No, but you see I grew up not being frightened of anything but rattlesnakes. That was the one thing that is told to every baby from the time you shake a rattle in his face: be careful of rattlesnakes. Because there were so many rocks, and they were all over. No, I wasn't frightened, and I'm not frightened of things to this day. I don't know what I would do if something happened, but I have a feeling I'd do something for self-protection. Did your parents explain to you what was going on, or did you know? Oh, they explained. I was about nine or ten years old, so, yes. You were not protected [with] "Now, don't tell the children this, that, and the other." Well, the children heard everything. You grew up in a very natural way, you know, knowing. There was nothing soft about this land. You know, they say everything out there either stinks or stings. I think it's beautiful, but there's nothing in the beginning to make it easy for a person, for anybody, for a child. You grow up knowing you've got to learn to ride, and if you get thrown off, you just hope that you're not hurt. You learn how to try to protect yourself. There's not much room for a crybaby in that part of the world, or [there] wasn't. Did you feel that you wanted them to catch Pancho Villa? Oh, I couldn't stand him. I thought it was terrible because he was stealing. And I'd know when my father and the other ranchers would get together and form a posse, and they would be almost afoot. Maybe they'd each be able to get or find a horse that had not been stolen; maybe one that was right at the house, or near the house, because all the good ones would be stolen. Of course, that went on for a long time. But they're making a Robin Hood out of him now. I don't think that's quite right. About how many years was this going on? Well, it went on several years. He made his raids in Columbus, and then he came down into the Big Bend. Then his headquarters became more Chihuahua, Chihuahua City. I think this has been recorded. It isn't generally known, but someone wrote a note about it, wrote a paragraph on it, in one of their books lately-Mrs. Mallard's book. My father, who was really utterly fearless, was a deputy in the Big Bend. The sheriff was Ira Klein, who was quite a well-known sheriff in the Big Bend during that time. Pancho sent word that if Fletcher Rawlie, (because they never could say Rawls) met him, he [Pancho] would pay in gold. So [my father] went, but, of course, he went armed, to Chihuahua. There one of his men, Pancho Villa's men, met him at the hotel. He said he sat in a corner, and he kept looking at him. Of course, my father spoke Spanish as well as he did English, maybe better, and everybody did. It was truly a bilingual part of the country for the ones on our side of the Rio Grande, but the Mexicans as a rule did not speak English. So you spoke Spanish. But [my father] noticed he wasn't making any move. He met him, and they went up to his room, my father's room, and [my father] said he didn't make any move to take him or to leave the room to go meet Pancho or to get the money. So he kept wondering. He thought, wonder what it is I'm not doing right. So he pulled off his belt and his scabbard and pulled out his suitcase from under the bed, put [them] in there, and locked it or closed it. When he did that, then the Mexican nodded yes. So he went unarmed, and he was paid. They were the only two; he and my uncle were the only two that were ever paid, so the story goes. And this was for all the.. For the horses that had been [stolen], because they didn't steal cattle from those ranchers. They stole horses, and they'd leave theirs, just mostly nags. Was this like gold pesos, or not? Uh-huh. Not bars or anything? Oh, no, no, no. It wasn't bars; it was Mexican gold. That's fascinating. Well, yeah. Here I live in Salado, Texas, and it has a good Spanish name, so there is a connection, I guess. But, of course, in the meantime, I have lived a very sophisticated life. Having grown up in my school days in San Antonio, well, I went to Incarnate Word, and from there I went to San Antonio College, which is now called SAC. And this was kind of fun because it was the second year that they had started, and they were in the old German school, which is now part of La Villita. And so I went to school there. And then I worked in a bookstore, Moss's old bookstore, and it was a big one. It was supposed to have been one of the biggest in the South. That's where I met my husband. He was a book dealer, and he had been head of the Rare Book Department at Wanamaker's. So, of course, this was a natural marriage. We married and moved to Houston and started our bookstore in 1927. I married in 1927 and started a bookstore and started a family. I have to backtrack. I think we have to get the camp meetings in here, too. Oh, the camp meetings. Oh, I just got a book from Texas Western, from the University of Texas at El Paso, and it's called The Circuit Riders of the Big Bend . Well, one of the earliest ones was by a man by the name of Bloys . There was a big camp meeting once a year up in the Davis Mountains. All of the ranchers, with their families, would go, and they'd each set up their own tent: you were in the Rawls's camp, or you were at the Mitchell's camp, or you were at this camp. All the children had...it was wonderful, because of the stream. And we played in the creek and, you know, had more fun. It was marvelous, like going to a circus for the children. And, of course, it was a wonderful way of socializing for the ranch families. Regardless of your denomination, this was the one time of year that everybody went to church. For the people who lived on ranches, this was their big opportunity to go and be saved, I guess. Well, how did they get the message around that they were having a meeting? By telephone. It's wonderful how everybody stayed pretty well in contact. Do you have any idea what year or how old you were the first time you went to one? Oh, I don't remember. I was certainly not in school, and I don't remember. I must have been six or seven, something like that. That was always a great thing. Later, they changed the name from Bloys to Skillman Grove because it was a grove and that was the rancher that donated the place. Then it began to break up into denominations later. The Baptists have a big one at Paisano, but it was started from this original one. That was the great social gathering of the year. Everybody went, and everybody did their own cooking. Then you had the great big long boards where you put everything out, you know, like covered dish suppers. Well, the churches still do this some, in a different way. Do you remember meeting anybody that really impressed you, or that you remember? Well, at that age, I wasn't impressed by anybody. You know, I was just having a good time, and it was so wonderful to be with other children and play. Were there organized games or did you just do your own thing? Everybody did their own thing. They didn't pay much attention to the children, you know. It was one big playground, and the children would do about what they wanted to. The families would meet, and they'd have preaching in the morning, and then they'd have another one in the afternoon, and I guess they had one at night. I was thinking about the children and child abuse and that sort of thing. Oh, never heard of such a thing until recently. Well, I don't believe those kind of people gravitated to that because the life was too hard to make a living, and everybody there was ambitious. They were building; they had obligations; they took it seriously. It was not a place for pampered people at all. There were no pampered children, as I look back. Most of those ranchers' children went on to become pretty great people. And at school, they went to [Southern Methodist University], and they went to Baylor University, and a lot of them went to [the University of] Texas. A few, after they finished from these schools, went on to Europe because, by the time we were grown, then the ranchers were much more prosperous. You know, the ranches were big. They had to take so many sections to begin with. I just don't know of anybody that was pampered. No, you couldn't be. You didn't have time to pamper your children. Isn't that wonderful? I think my childhood was absolutely wonderful. And maybe that's why I'm such an extrovert. Well, you would think at a gathering like that that the children might have to be quiet at certain times. Well, they played. There was some discipline, of course, and the rod was the discipline, you know. There was no patting and saying, "Dear, you quiet down." You'd just get over there and keep quiet, and you did what you were told. I don't remember ever doing anything but obey. I just believed in doing what you were told to do, and there was just not much discussion about that. And the horse.I remember our horse was named Old Pacer, and he was so gentle that we could get on and slide off his back like a sliding board. We could walk under his legs and between them and everything. Every family had such a horse for the children, and you had to take care of them and be kind to them. And you had to have dogs. There were always two sets of dogs. Usually there were bloodhounds, but they were kept away from the house. They were for trailing panthers [bobcats]. Your young calves were prey to lots of panthers-panthers were real bad out there. They would go on panther hunts, so they usually had bloodhounds. Every rancher had his own hunting dogs or bloodhounds. And then we all had pets besides that. All animals were pets. But you were trained not to get too attached to cattle; maybe one little calf that would come in. I remember this happened a good many times. Maybe a deer, a small one, had been shot and wounded, and my father or my uncle would bring it in and then nurse it back to life. And then they'd get to be such pets you could hardly get rid of them. You wanted them to go back to the wild, and then finally they'd leave and go back. But you always felt like, well, maybe you did the wrong thing because he did not have the natural fear anymore of humans and was unable to take care of himself as much. What about hunting? Did you learn how to shoot? Did you go hunting? Well, I didn't go hunting much, but, of course, that was a great sport. All women had to know how to shoot. There were almost no women that went on these hunting trips. This was a man's world- truly a man's world. It was not [for] a "tenderfoot," where you go out and do a little hunting and a little shooting, that sort of thing. When I used to go back to see my father, I took my daughter and my son. We'd go out and spend a month with him every summer on the ranch. It was wonderful. But one time a young woman who was an artist from Cincinnati went with me, and she, of course, loved it. She was quite a good horsewoman, so they let her ride, but she'd always have to ride with someone or she'd get lost. If you got lost out there, it would take an airplane to find you, if they found you at all. So there were several rules. You couldn't just take people out there on house parties for fun. They were working ranches. If they'd never been on a ranch before, [or] if they thought they rode well.... Well, riding an English saddle and riding a Western saddle and riding those kind of horses where you have to stay on for dear life if you go down a steep mountain with lots of rocks falling, the whole concept is different. And so guests were not particularly welcome in the early days if they were not familiar with the West, unless they were just houseguests. They'd be a nuisance, and they'd get underfoot and you had to take time out to always go with them someplace. I remember one summer my son, Tyler, took a friend, and they went out to spend the summer on the ranch. They went out to my uncle's ranch. And he told them, he said, "All right, this is a working ranch, not play. It isn't a city place at all, and you'll have to just take it like everybody else. You know, no sleeping late in the morning; you're up at five. You'll ride. You'll be told where you can go. You must never...." They gave them certain rules. "If you disobey those and we have to form a posse to find you, then you're in trouble." And so, I remember Tyler and Hal, somebody was with them, but they went off by themselves, and Tyler fell off his horse. It's rugged country. Somehow or other he did walk back to the ranch, and I imagine it was two or three miles in the hot sun. He thought Uncle Tom would feel sorry for him, but [Uncle Tom] said, "I don't feel sorry for you. You go out there, and you find that horse with that saddle. He's got a $200 saddle on him." And he said, "That's a lot more important than how you feel about it." The saddle was much more important. So he was not pampered about that, and they didn't feel sorry for him. And, of course, that was one of his very good lessons that he learned in life right there. What about when they did go hunting? Was this important? Did it help to fill the larder? Oh, yes. It was important, and they were very strict, even back in those days, about the game laws. And there were certain times you could hunt, and that's when you hunted. You had friends that would come, and the men would go hunting. They'd bring in venison, and that was important but not as important as some people thought. Even though in the early, early days during buffalo times, that's the meat that they depended on. You must remember these people all raised Hereford cattle, and most of the bulls were registered. In fact, my cousin wanted to go to Spain. She was a foreign language major and was teaching. She wanted to go to Spain one year and work on her master's [degree]. My uncle thought that would be all right until he found he could buy this registered Hereford bull. That cut off her trip to Spain. The bull cost more than the trip to Spain, but she had her doctorate from Middlebury [College] later. Was this in the '30s then? That was probably in the '20s. That's getting kind of recent, really. What about the other animals? Were there peccary and wild turkey? Well, we had a lot of wild game. The javelina hogs, they had those, but you really never ate those because they were too strong. But the other game you ate. I don't remember much besides the deer. Of course, in that part of the world, they had the blacktail deer, which are supposed to be very fine. I think that's the only region that you find them. Tell me about your mother and your dad. Did they read a lot? Yes. They were readers, and I think most of those ranchers were readers. They'd get books, and then they'd exchange them. When you'd go to see anybody, you'd take the day off, you know, and go in your wagon to call on the neighbor. Our nearest neighbors were the Humphreys. I think I have a picture of my mother with hat and gloves on in the wagon to go see the Humphreys. But this was their time to dress up. They'd get together maybe once or twice a year, in the summer especially. They didn't do this in the winter, but in the summer there'd be a group that would get together to go to Presidio, which wasn't awfully far, but it was by wagon. [They'd] camp and catch fish-go fishing. And I remember that and how awful the mosquitoes were. They were as big as the fish. But that was always quite an experience. Fish was quite a delicacy. We didn't have fish very often, except when we caught it. What about your mother, you said she dressed up. Did she go to San Antonio to buy her outfits or did she sew them? Well, no [she didn't sew them]. Most of the regular clothes were bought. San Antonio or El Paso were the places that they would go to buy their good clothes. Now, the boots were always made by Lucchese; I guess he's still in business in San Antonio. They were always handmade boots. Even the women wore handmade boots. Did your mother sew any clothes for you? Oh, my mother, of course, had to sew, like she had to bake bread. And then she did a lot of embroidery. I don't remember her crocheting, but she did a lot of embroidery. Our pillowslips were embroidered and our tablecloths. Going back to when you did your shopping-twice a year. Always you bought a bolt [of cloth]. Each [rancher] had a sort of a commissary. The Mexican help, the Mexican families, were issued so many sacks of beans a year, or as they needed it, or so many gallons of lard. They'd come and sign the little slip and take it. That way you kept up, and they knew how much to order for the Mexican families that lived on the place. Also, at that time, you bought bolts of material for the Mexicans. Of course, you'd buy a bolt for yourself. Our sheets were always white, but the Mexicans made everything out of maybe one bolt of material. The little girls' dresses would be made out of it, a little print of some kind, and their sheets and pillowcases, their shirts. So all this colored business of sheets I'm sure started from just that. The cowboys all had a roll, a bedroll, because there wasn't always a place for the cowboys to sleep at roundup time when they'd come. And each place had its own blacksmith shop, too. The way my father had it, he had on the wall where all of his tools went. They had to shoe their own horses or take care of the windmills, whatever. They had to be a jack of all trades. I remember he had a picture drawn on the wall, and if that tool that belonged at that picture wasn't there, you'd just better look out. Nobody borrowed anything unless they brought it right back. Was that barn of adobe also? Everything was adobe. Everything. And the Mexicans built those? Well, they had certain crews that they would get from Mexico that were especially good at adobe making. Have you ever seen adobes made? Where they get in with their feet? Well, they would get in, and they'd have a certain amount of hay, a certain type of hay that they'd use. Kind of a straw type of hay. I haven't seen any around. They'd make this great big sort of a vat. Then they'd have maybe someplace on the ranch that had the right kind of dirt, maybe right there or right close. They had this dirt, and they'd add this hay to it, and then they'd tromp it, and then they'd put a little bit more water. They could tell just the right consistency. And then it was poured into blocks. They had the blocks all made like forms, like concrete forms, and then stacked for so long to cure. All houses, everything's adobe. In fact, I believe that there was only one two-story house in Marfa, and it belonged to a Dr. Mahone, and it was made out of lumber. Everything else was adobe stuccoed over as it is in Mexico and as it is in Santa Fe, New Mexico. It's the same type of architecture, the square tops with the big poles that come out. Those houses are still standing, and they are still warm, and they are still cool in the summer. Did you have tile floors then? What kind of tile? I've never heard of tile. No, it was wooden floors. The floors were wood, and the Mexican houses usually did not; they had dirt floors. But those dirt floors were patted every day and sprinkled down and patted down, and it was just like concrete. And they could sweep them. They kept them that way. Well, did you go to play with them in their houses? Oh, I loved it. Those were the only children I had to play with besides my brother. He was three years younger, [and] at that age [it] makes a difference. So I'd get on my horse-I guess the nearest Mexican house was probably a mile away-and I'd go by the Mexican's house, and she maybe would be grinding her corn for her daily supply of tortillas maize. You know you didn't have flour tortillas unless you ran out of corn. Now it is the other way around, I think. The tortillas de harina are supposed to be good, but I still like the corn tortillas better. Anyway, she'd be grinding that, and over here she'd have a metate . Then over here at the side she'd have a grill where she'd be cooking them. She'd fix me one and get some mashed-up beans and put in it and roll it up. I'd take that and put it in my saddlebag, and that's what I'd eat. Did she have a charcoal burner? Is that the type of burner that she had? Well, they didn't have charcoal. They used wood. I don't know where they got the wood, but that's all they had. You know, they didn't have anything fancy. They didn't have any lighters or any of that stuff. Sometimes, if you ran out of matches, you had to find some flint and strike your own fire. That was quite common, especially if you were camping. Well, when you played with their little children, did you bring your little dolls? I didn't bring anything. I would just go. I'd slip off, because I wasn't supposed to do that. I wasn't supposed to go down there and play with them all the time because they had lice, and they had this, that, and the other, especially lice. And my mother would just want to dip me every time I'd go down there. She'd be furious with me. But I loved them, and they loved me, and I still had this terrific rapport. My mother never had it. My father did, but she didn't. They divorced sometime later. That life was a little too different from the way she'd grown up. I could certainly understand it, but I loved it. You were going to tell about some of the books that she read to you. Well, they were the Grimm's Fairy Tales and the classics or animal stories. And, of course, they would read, my father and mother, and they would exchange with Uncle Tom and Aunt Dolly. They would all exchange. They would come with a big sack of books, and they'd exchange it for another sack that you'd read. There were some classics. Some were the going books that were popular at the time. But they all kept up with what was going on. Did you read any of the series, like Horatio Alger, or that? Well, now that really was a little bit before my time. The Henty books and the Horatio Alger were before my time. I remember reading, a little bit later, the Little Colonel series and the Rover Boys and what else. We got some in the other day. I guess the ones mostly were the Rover Boys and the Little Colonel series. And, then, I remember the fairy tales and Aesop's Fables . We had those stories. Let's see, there was also the Child's History of England , I remember that one. And of course there was always some Dickens around. Was the Child's History of England by Charles and Mary Beard or was that a different one? It was a different one. I'm trying to think whose Child's History it was. Then there was also the one we got in the store the other day. It was, and I don't know why in the world I'd read that, but it was Knickerbocker's History of New York. It was the early history of the Dutch settlers. When you went to Incarnate Word, did you take Spanish too? Sure, and I had French too. My little French nun that taught me French was awfully disgusted with me because I couldn't get over my Mexican accent. She would get furious at me, almost throw things at me, because I'd say it with a Spanish accent rather than the French. I never was able to conquer that. But I had Spanish all through high school. Then, when I went to college, I decided I'd take German. I think that was the influence in San Antonio. There were so many there, and I knew so many of the old-timers. Some of them were the descendants of the earlier German settlers. I had quite a rapport with them. So, I took German, but that was almost a disaster, too. I should have stayed with Spanish all along. I should never have gotten away from Spanish. I still want to go to Spain, but I love Mexico. I always thought I'd live in Mexico some day. In fact, I had planned [to, but] I knew that Herbert and I would never live in Mexico. But I thought, if he dies, I'm going to Mexico, and I'm gonna live [there], maybe go down to Cuernavaca and get a house. I love Mexico. I still do. Voice from across the room: I think it was interesting how during World War I the actions between the French nuns and the Germans.. Oh, that was very tense during World War I while I was at school at Incarnate Word, because the German nuns would hardly speak to the French nuns. It was very, very tense. Both of them had families, you know, in both countries. My violin teacher was a German, and she was a beautiful, beautiful woman, but it was a very tense time. I also remember the most marvelous group of men I ever looked at in my life. There were some French soldiers who came and spoke to us about what was going on in France, and [they were] in their gorgeous uniforms. I was really a teenager at that time, and I just thought they were the most beautiful men I'd ever looked at in my life. They were handsome, and, of course, in their uniforms, they were pristine. Did you all have to wear uniforms at school? Yes, we wore uniforms. We had two uniforms. That's why the little Indian girl from Oklahoma couldn't wear her costumes. For everyday we wore black wool pleated skirts, and our blouses were little black-and-white check trimmed in white. And then, for Sunday, we had a different checked skirt and a white blouse. And then, for when we went out to symphonies and any cultural thing that they had in downtown San Antonio, we had gray uniforms with the square tops and red tassels. They were very, very neat, and, of course, they were all beautifully tailored. I've forgotten who did the tailoring. It was by one of the big houses in New York. All of those were beautifully done. The materials were gorgeous. Voice: The veils you had to wear to chapel? Well, we had to go to early morning chapel and the black lace mantilla, the small one, we wore for everyday, and then the white on Sunday. I'm sure it was a beautiful sight in the chapel. And that was another thing. When my father took me to San Antonio to go to school, he said, "This child has just got to go to school." He was Methodist, and so he was going to put me in what is now Westmoreland. I guess it's still Westmoreland in San Antonio. Well, it was a Methodist girls' boarding school. But, anyhow, they were changing hands, and they were just really in a mess, so he said, "Well, you're here, and you've got to go to school." So he went out to Incarnate Word rather than the Lady of the Lake because the Lady of the Lake was much farther out. So we went out, and he was-so was I-bowled over, so impressed when we walked into their parlors, the hall, the furnishings. There were Oriental rugs. As I look back now, it was Victorian furniture and Oriental rugs. Then, when we went to the chapel, I thought-after camp meeting-I never saw such a gorgeous church in my life. It was so beautiful, and it is still a gem. It is a little gem. My grandson went to see it not too long ago, and he just fell in love with it. [Your father] signed you up? Oh, right then. What about Ursuline Academy? Well, Ursuline was a little different. It was a little farther downtown. I think the girls that went to Ursuline lived in San Antonio. I'm not sure. I don't know why not Ursuline, but I know that Incarnate Word was the place I landed, and I loved it. I could hardly wait for school to start every fall. I met and had some very, very dear friends, and a good many of them have written books. Anita Brenner has written several books on Mexico; one is a classic that the University of Texas keeps alive- The Wind That Swept Mexico. Then Josephine Negley has written The Mexican Village. A good many of the girls went from there. Some of the Mexican girls that came there, after they graduated, were sent on to France for the finishing. This was considered quite a finishing school as well. We had certain days that we did certain things. On Saturday morning, you had about two hours of embroidery. You had to embroider. This was just a real complicated deal because you did the French kind, where you had to do all the blending of all the colors. It was more like our tapestry. Not tapestry, but you've seen these Oriental things. Well, a lot of it was that type of embroidery. Then, of course, there was also the practical. They taught you how to darn. And that darning had to be just as beautiful as the embroidery. At the end of the year, there was an exhibit of these things. Then, you had another hour-I think it was 11:00 until lunch- every Saturday [when] you had table manners. You know, how to take fish bones out of our mouths delicately and all these little niceties. Not all of the girls took music. I had violin. I don't know why, but I thought it would be great. I was tone deaf, and it was very difficult for me. But it was considered a finishing school. The nuns were very strict, and you weren't pampered there, either. Did they encourage you, though? I mean they probably didn't say you are stupid or you are dumb.... No. But they didn't put up with any foolishness. No, they never did that. There were always writing contests going on where you were pitted against each other in the class. We had a lot of outside entertainment that was brought there. Some of the Shakespearean players that would come to San Antonio would come out and give recitals for us. Of course, they were paid. We had lots of advantages that I doubt that schools have now. Were they all boarders? No, there were some day boarders too. I always felt kind of sorry for the day boarders because it was so much harder on them. They just didn't have the time to study. You were surrounded. It was a very cultural and scholarly surroundings that you had. You didn't really have time to think about dates. We did have one dance. We had one senior dance, one dance a year, and it was at the San Antonio Country Club. The boys that were invited were from St. Mary's University. I think it was called St. Mary's College then. Everything was very well ordered. It must have been terribly glamorous after the ranch, I'm sure. Well, it was glamorous in a whole different way. You know, there were a lot of people who thought the ranch was so glamorous. But it was hard. And this other was to me a lot more glamorous. So, you went there when you were nine years old until you were seventeen? And then I went to SAC. When you went to SAC, did you stay with friends? No, I stayed with a family. At that time, I started working in the bookstore. And then, that's where you met Herbert, in the bookstore. Yes, he was there. He was the librarian at the medical center at Fort Sam Houston, and that's how I happened to meet him. But then he chose Houston after you were married? Well, he said he'd been looking at Houston. In fact, he was looking to start a store, and he had thought of Houston or San Antonio. I think he made a very wise choice, though we both loved San Antonio. And then you moved to Houston when you were just married? Well, we were married about a year before he opened the bookstore. He worked for Pillot's Bookstore. When he had been with Pillot's a year, he organized a company, and he incorporated and started a bookstore by our home. And it was always Fletcher's. Then, a little bit later, I guess about four or five years later, not too much later, he started the Anson Jones Press. That was kind of interesting. A Mrs. Williams came to see him from Galveston, and she said that she had all of these books that had been in storage for over a hundred years in their warehouses. They had sold the warehouses, and they had to clear them. There they found, back in a corner, all these books written by Anson Jones. His widow for some reason or other had refused them, so they just stayed there. She had refused to accept them from the publisher, so they had stayed there all this time. Well, there were a few Texas dealers, Texana dealers, who knew about them, and they would go and buy maybe two or three or four at a time. They thought nobody knew about it and they'd be there forever, I guess. Well, anyway, Herbert formed another little company and called it the Anson Jones Press. [He] bought the books, and, goodness, I wish I had some of them now. They are around $250 apiece, if you can find them. Paul Wakefield was then a reporter with the Chronicle but later became-what was he-head of Selective Service. They made him a something general of Selective Service for the State of Texas. But he gave one whole front page of a story to when Herbert bought and organized [the Anson Jones Press] and how he started it. It was front-page news. How many books were there? I don't remember. I really don't remember. It's kind of hard for me to say. But most of the books were about.... They were written by Anson Jones, and they were, of course, about Texas. It had all of his writings and also all about Texas. Anson Jones was the last president of the Republic of Texas. He was a doctor, and later he became.I don't know that anybody researched his reason why he committed suicide. I just got from Texas A&M Press a book by Elizabeth Silverthorn from Temple, who has written a very scholarly work on Dr. Asheville Smith. Dr. Asheville Smith was a Yale graduate and a doctor. When he came to Texas, General Sam Houston made him Surgeon General of the Texian Army. He was also the real, real founder of what is now the University of Texas School of Medicine at Galveston. And he was the hero, really, of the yellow fever epidemic. When we'd go looking for Texana, early Texas books, whether it was London or Mexico City, Yale University had already been there. For many, many years, they had the finest collection of Texana in the country. I don't know that that's still true, but, anyhow, Mrs. Silverthorn did a lot of her research there in Austin and also in London. |
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